The kid's in the picture

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As a refugee in Sydney's west, Khoa Do grew up with nothing. Now
the Young Australian of the Year has everything going his way. By
Gabriella Coslovich.

Cabramatta is a long way from Bondi Beach, longer still from the
Sydney cliche of breathtaking views, pounding surf, bronzed,
beautiful people and backpacking hordes hot for fast flings and
adventure. Cabramatta has a heated reputation for something else -
drugs, crime, violence, Asian gangs. Yet this maligned suburb in
Sydney's west, which some have branded Australia's drug capital, is
a font of inspiration, not fear, for 26-year-old Khoa Do.

As we walk its bustling streets, past Asian groceries bursting
with exotic fruit - rambutan, mangosteen, longan and lychees -
fairy-lit discount marts blaring with tinny Vietnamese pop music,
stores ablaze with red lanterns, sweet shops piled high with New
Year cheer, offering cakes and other delicacies, it is clear that
the people of Cabramatta are equally inspired by Do.

Every few steps, someone stops to congratulate him - from those
who know him, to those who recognise his face from television and
newspapers.

"Hey man, you're the Young Australian of the Year, right?" a guy
asks and holds out his hand. As we enter the Bau Truong restaurant
for lunch, a woman rushes up and gives Do a copy of the local
Saigon Times, a huge photo of the young achiever and NSW
Premier Bob Carr on the front page.

Do has made headlines of a different sort for Cabramatta and its
neigh-bouring western suburbs, and the locals are beaming. A Sydney
University arts graduate and filmmaker to watch, he is proof that
the right stuff can come from the so-called wrong side of town.
Proof, too, that a Vietnamese refugee, who arrived here in a
fishing boat, aged two, can become a role model for other young
Australians. For Do, one of the most important consequences of his
award is the chance to encourage other young people from
disadvantaged backgrounds.

"They do feel they have it rougher in life, especially a place
like Cabramatta, which is a place that's close to my heart," he
says.

Ironically, those from both the left and the right of politics
have seized on Do's success and selection as Young Australian of
the Year to support their world view, whether that's to denounce or
applaud Australia's immigration policies and attitudes to
newcomers. The left wryly asks whether Prime Minister John Howard
twigged that Do was one of those despised boat people, someone who
today might be sentenced to mandatory detention for daring to hope
for a better life.

Khoa Do, on the streets of Cabramatta, where
his film The Finished People was shot.Photo:Marco Del Grande

The right, on the other hand, triumphantly points to Do's
comment that "Australia is the best bloody country in the world"
and to his award as evidence that this is not a racist nation.

Do falters when asked about his own political beliefs, declines
to take a stance, and seems somewhat embarrassed to be used for
political mileage. He'd rather go out and make movies about the
issues that matter to him - poverty, homelessness, the exploitation
of migrant workers - than get involved in the dirty business of
politics.

"I do think Australia is the best country and I feel so
fortunate to come here and to be living here in every way,
especially having travelled around the world to film festivals and
other places. It's always so great to come home.

"But what makes it great is the spirit of the people, of
Australian people ... I'm not talking about the Government, but
everyday people."

Do's optimism can be unnerving. Is it youthful naivety that
allows him to stay so positive despite the problems he sees?
Spending a day with him, I realise that his is not a Pollyanna-ish
sort of idealism. His attitude is uplifting.

When Do sees inequity, he gets active not angry, he'd rather
gently change people's perceptions, than beat them up with his
opinions. There's nothing try-hard or dogmatic about him. He's
softly spoken, serene and funny. Humour runs in the family - older
brother Anh, who nominated Do for his award, is a stand-up comedian
and will star in Do's latest film, Footy Legends, which
the two are co-writing, along with Anh's wife, lawyer Suzanne
Do.

Set in Sydney's western suburbs, Footy Legends tells
the story of Luc Vu, a young Vietnamese-Australian man who is
obsessed with football. Out of work, and with welfare authorities
threatening to take away his little sister, Luc re-unites his old
high-school football team to win a competition that could change
all their lives.

Claudia Karvan will perform in the film, and on Tuesday Do
received some extremely welcome news - the Film Finance Corporation
and NSW Film and Television Office have agreed to invest in his
latest venture. Icon Film Distribution will distribute the film in
Australia and New Zealand, with Showtime/PMP taking Australian
Pay-TV rights, while Fortissimo Films will handle international
sales.

Although Footy Legends is still a low-budget project by
industry standards, having big investors on board is a huge leap
for Do, who made his first two films on the proverbial smell of an
oily rag.

His first, Delivery Day, a 30-minute short, is the
story of migrant outworkers labouring away on sewing machines in
their garages, furiously trying to meet their "delivery day"
deadline. The film is partly autobiographical - Do's mother is a
factory seamstress.

Delivery Day was nominated for an Australian Film
Institute Award in 2001, but failed to pick up a prize. However,
juries the world over felt differently - the film won awards at
festivals in Berlin, Chicago, Giffoni (Italy), New York and Palm
Springs.

Khoa's second film, The Finished People, was also
overlooked at the AFI awards last year - although nominated for
three awards it was pipped by Cate Shortland's Somersault,
which famously scooped the feature film prize pool. Nonetheless,
one Australian critic praised The Finished People as one
of the most important local films of the past few years.

The making of The Finished People was a feat in itself,
a journey that began in a tiny classroom at Open Family in
Cabramatta, a not-for-profit organisation that helps street kids
improve their self-worth and well-being. Armed with a whiteboard
and a miniscule television set, Do, a long-time volunteer at the
centre, began teaching the basics of scriptwriting to the youth who
signed on for his class. His course had a funny title - "Making
Movies With Khoa" - but it lived up to its promise. Do's unlikely
crew not only made a movie, they got it shown at film festivals in
Canada, England and France.

In their stuffy little room, with an air-conditioner that needed
to be thumped into life, Do and his proteges would crowd around
their pint-size TV, watching movies such as Jerry Maguire,
Central Station, and Taxi Driver, to Once Upon A
Time In China. They watched Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the
Dark for its use of the hand-held digital camera, and Larry
Clark's Kids for content. A low-budget independent film
about teenagers growing up in poverty in New York City,
Kids treaded similar terrain to the script of The
Finished People, but the kids of Cabramatta were adamant they
wanted an entirely different tone.

"The guys looked at it and said, 'yeah, yeah, this is a very
hard-core, full-on film', but they didn't feel for the characters.
They said, 'I don't like these guys at all', and I said, 'You know
what, I'd have to agree with you on that one'."

While it's easy, at the start, to judge the characters in
The Finished People, to brand them a bunch of losers, as
the film unravels you slowly begin to understand how oppressive the
poverty cycle can be, and how difficult it is to escape it. You see
the dead-ends, the brick walls, and by the film's end, you feel
nothing but compassion.

"That was the whole reason for making The Finished
People, to show, this is who you think are the hard core and
the roughest of the rough ... these are the people you would avoid
at all costs," says Do.

But The Finished People is not sentimental, nor does it
sanitise street kids' lives. It can be ugly and gritty, it has a
documentary style, the dialogue and drama ring true, and the
performances are outstanding. At a time when the film industry
slavishly pursues star names to get projects green-lit, it's a
delight to discover a bunch of talented first-time actors - and to
see faces that truly reflect Australia's cultural diversity. Joe
Le, who plays "Van", and Jason McGoldrick as "Tommy", are
particularly impressive.

"They (all) did an amazing job ... we did a lot of workshops and
we watched a lot of De Niro. Joe (Le) would watch De Niro and then
Jason (McGoldrick) would go and watch Van Damme. And I said, don't
learn from Van Damme, please guys."

The Finished People ends with a dedication to all young
Australians living in poverty. Poverty is not just absence of
wealth, the film notes, but poverty of understanding, self-respect,
belonging and love.

While Do is rich with these last four, he knows about the
absence of wealth. He grew up in Sydney's west, moving from house
to house with his brother, sister and mother, going where the rent
was cheapest. The family settled in Yagoona West four years ago,
just managing to put a deposit on a house before Sydney real estate
prices went berserk.

"We were quite poor when we were kids. I went to school with
sticky-taped shoes that my brother had given me, and he had got
them from St Vinnies.

"I suppose to go through those periods you learn to look at life
in a real positive light, and you also learn to laugh at yourself
when things get ridiculously impossible."

After primary school, both Do and his brother Anh received part
scholarships to study at St Aloysius College, a private Catholic
school in Sydney's affluent north.

"I remember first going to this school and everybody had quite a
refined northern suburbs accent and I had this real westie accent,
and for weeks my teacher used to get me to come to the front of the
class every Monday and just tell the class stories, 'cause the
class would laugh ... they saw me as kind of the westie bloke who
came from a different world altogether."

It was good practice for a budding filmmaker. So was growing up
poor. It's no accident that both Do and Anh have chosen careers
that hardly guarantee financial security - film-making and
comedy.

"We've grown up in an environment where we've had very little,
so we kind of went, 'what's the worst-case scenario? We go back to
having nothing, cool'. We've been there, you know, it's all
good.

"I've told everyone that I'll give this a go for a couple of
years, and if all goes well, then fine. If not, then I'll always be
more than happy to do whatever, lay bricks in the backyard, go and
be a teacher, something like that."

With Do's credentials, no doubt there'd be plenty of schools
happy to take him on, but it seems unlikely they'll get the
chance.